noirish Los Angeles

[CityBoyDoug]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

At first I thought this large ad with its odd 'warning' was about Natasha Rambova, Rudolph Valentino's paramour,

...but it's another Natacha......Natacha Nattova. (who?)


You can read more about the Natacha Nattova here:
http://natachanattova.blogspot.com/2...-her-vase.html

Winifred Kimball Shaughnessy was her real name. Her stage name was Natacha Rambova. She was an artist and costume designer. She and Rudolph Valentino had a marriage of convenience.

It was well known in Hollywood that Natasha was a lesbian. No comment is needed about Rudy. His favorite party guests were the muscular Latin gardeners he hired to trim the roses and mow the lawn. Oy vey, such a life.

[tovangar2]

Originally Posted by HossC

Here's the cemetery in 1948.

Thank you HossC. The cemetery remained "remarkably unchanged" because the owner never spent a dime on it. Maybe, with hindsight, that's a good thing.

One can see the strip malls in the Google Maps aerial:


google maps

Here's a view of the shorter strip mall at Gower and Santa Monica Blvd built in front of the cemetery wall. There's a generous break for the cemetery entrance and then another, much longer strip running all the way to Van Ness. (And hey, check out those utility poles)


gsv

The strips weren't built until after I'd moved. I'm kind of in two minds about this development. The lawns were much loved by dog-walkers, frisbee-players and kids. However, as ugly as the strips are, the neighborhood desperately needed more retail and services. Too bad the cemetery didn't benefit. The then-owner was using the cemetery as his personal piggy-bank. The guy was a complete scoundrel.

[HossC]

I found this picture the other day while looking for pictures of S La Brea Avenue. It shows the rather attractive Motor Tires Inc service station at La Brea and 2nd in 1931.


USC Digital Library

Here's a detail shot of the pumps.


Detail of picture above.

I think it can be seen on the north-west corner of the intersection in this 1948 aerial image. Assuming I've got the right building, it can still be seen in 1980. The 1989 image is pretty blurry, but I think it shows the building currently on that site.


Historic Aerials

I had a go at finding the service station in the City Directories. The 1929 edition contains this advert with five branches listed, but not the one on La Brea.


LAPL

By the 1932 edition, probably published less than a year after the USC picture was taken, Motor Tires Inc has become Goodyear Service Inc. Their entry lists over a dozen branches, but the La Brea site is still not among them.


LAPL

Finally, I found a listing for the 181 S La Brea site in the 1936 CD. It looks like Goodyear Service Inc had trimmed their business down to a head office and four branches.


LAPL

[HossC]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

Hollywood Vine Motel 1133 Vine Street

ebay

Hollywood Vine Motel today

I found the postcard below on eBay earlier, not remembering that e_r had already posted the images above back in June 2013. I'm assuming that the image below is later because the shape of the larger sign seems to still be visible in the Vagabond Inn sign in the GSV image.



eBay

Here's how the Vagabond Inn looked from above. The site went all the way through from Vine Street to Lillian Way.


Google Maps

The Vagabond Inn didn't have many favorable reviews on yelp.com, although I liked the one that spoke about the wires sticking out of the "smoke dictator" . Maybe the reviews were behind a name change to the Vine Inn & Suites sometime between August 2012 and February 2014 (going by the GSV images). The image below appears to show the motel still in operation in March 2014.


GSV

The July 2014 GSV image shows the buildings intact, but there's a six foot fence across the front of the property, and a large piece of Caterpillar machinery in the parking lot. By August 2014 (the most recent GSV image currently available), it's a different story. Has anything been built in its place?


GSV

[Wig-Wag]

Originally Posted by HossC

I found this picture the other day while looking for pictures of S La Brea Avenue. It shows the rather attractive Motor Tires Inc service station at La Brea and 2nd in 1931.


USC Digital Library

Here's a detail shot of the pumps.


Detail of picture above.

I think it can be seen on the north-west corner of the intersection in this 1948 aerial image. Assuming I've got the right building, it can still be seen in 1980. The 1989 image is pretty blurry, but I think it shows the building currently on that site.


Historic Aerials

I had a go at finding the service station in the City Directories. The 1929 edition contains this advert with five branches listed, but not the one on La Brea.


LAPL

By the 1932 edition, probably published less than a year after the USC picture was taken, Motor Tires Inc has become Goodyear Service Inc. Their entry lists over a dozen branches, but the La Brea site is still not among them.


LAPL

Finally, I found a listing for the 181 S La Brea site in the 1936 CD. It looks like Goodyear Service Inc had trimmed their business down to a head office and four branches.


LAPL

Whoa, HossC! That is one great find! I wonder what happened to the Blimp model? Large scale models fascinated me as a kid and still do today.

Cheers,
Jack

[ethereal_reality]

I found this a few weeks ago on eBay.

"Los Angeles, La Fiesta Parade, 1915"


eBay

I've been trying to locate The Frankfort Apartments.

I've kept the photo LARGE to see the details / scroll right ------>to see the Pantages billboard advertising 'The Serpent of the Nile'.
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thx for the info. on the 'Galloping Goose' Wig_Wag. (Jack)

[Martin Pal]

Originally Posted by HossC

Vagabond Inn/Hollywood Vine Motel
_________
By August 2014 (the most recent GSV image currently available), it's a different story. Has anything been built in its place?


GSV

New Hotel on Vine Street to Replace Vagabond Inn
Julie Grist | November 19, 2014

The less-than-lovely former Vagabond Inn is but a distant memory [...] so we were wondering what’s on the slate for 1133 Vine Street? Turns out it’s a new hotel – a 112 room, six-story hotel that will sit deep on the skinny lot along the west side of Vine at Lillian Way [...] and will offer a small ground floor cafe, swimming pool and 63 parking spaces, mostly underground.



http://www.larchmontbuzz.com/larchmo...-vagabond-inn/

[ethereal_reality]

"Schaefer Hat Works, Los Angeles."


eBay

cute lil' illustration / but no other information.

[ethereal_reality]

Glass candy container in the shape of the dirigible U.S.S. Los Angeles.


eBay

"Has working aluminum screw-on cap. Blimp with closure measures 6 inches. Silver paint has chipped but in very good condition."
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[HossC]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

I found this a few weeks ago on eBay.

"Los Angeles, La Fiesta Parade, 1915"


eBay

I've been trying to locate The Frankfort Apartments.

I've kept the photo LARGE to see the details / scroll right ------>to see the Pantages billboard advertising 'The Serpent of the Nile'.

No sign of the Frankfort Apartments yet, but here's a little background on Bothwell Browne and the Serpent of the Nile. It's from a book called 'Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965' by Nan Alamilla Boyd.


books.google.com

I also found a advert for the show in the November 4, 1913 edition of the San Francisco Call. It refers to the Pantages Theatre at 937 Market Street, San Francisco.


California Digital Newspaper Collection


---------------


Thanks for the follow-up on the Vagabond Inn's replacement, Martin Pal.

[ethereal_reality]

I had trouble finding anything on the Frankfort Apartment as well HossC.
I thought it would be relatively easy dig something up, what with the prominent sign and that rounded 'room' on the roof. -not to mention the other unique 'tower'.

Completely surprised about Bothwell Browne being a female impersonator. -just a few days ago we were talking about Rae Bourbon and the B.B.B. Cellar.
__

[tovangar2]

There's a small preview of Bothwell Browne's only film, "Yankee Doodle in Berlin" (1919) on YouTube. It's only a minute, but Browne's transformation is a wonder.

[HossC]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

I had trouble finding anything on the Frankfort Apartment as well HossC.
I thought it would be relatively easy dig something up, what with the prominent sign and that rounded 'room' on the roof. -not to mention the other unique 'tower'.

Completely surprised about Bothwell Browne being a female impersonator. -just a few days ago we were talking about Rae Bourbon and the B.B.B. Cellar.

I've just found that the same picture appears in a recent post on a Facebook page called Bizarre Los Angeles. Although the poster also failed to find the Frankfort, they did include the date of the parade and the route:

A wagon decorated for the La Fiesta de Los Angeles Parade, an event that took place on May 3, 1915.

The back building sign (above the words 'Drink Coca-Cola') appears to read The Frankfort Apartments, a building I cannot locate in old city directories. The billboard on the right, however, refers to the downtown Pantages Theatre. At the time, the theatre was running a new play called, "The Claim Agent." Also advertised on the billboard is a vaudeville sketch called, "The Serpent of the Nile," starring female impersonator Bothwell Browne as "Cleopatra." The sketch originally debuted in Los Angeles in 1913, so Browne must be doing a reprise.

As for the parade route, the La Fiesta de Los Angeles started at the intersection of 11th and Hill streets, moved north on Hill to 9th, east on 9th to Broadway, north on Broadway to 1st, east on 1st to Spring, and south on Spring to 9th.

[Martin Pal]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

I just came across these two photographs of a UNITED SERVICE gas station at 5301 Melrose Avenue.

The entire post (#25030) is HERE.

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

The site today is a Paramount Studio parking lot.

google-aerial
__

Originally Posted by HossC

[...] I went for the earlier 1948 view because it's clearer. Could that be e_r's United Service Station on the corner of Melrose and Van Ness?

Historic Aerials

The entire post (#25036) is HERE.

These posts, and several others around them, discuss the gas station, Paramount Studios and several other buildings in the area.

ANOTHER GAS STATION:

In the above aerial, at approximately 5400 Melrose Ave. at Bronson, is Dave's Texaco Gas Station.

I discovered a website with a page titled: "Melrose Avenue Circa 1944 - 1948." The introduction reads as follows:

The following notes describe true events and activities concerning my friends and me during our High School years in the Hollywood/Los Angeles area prior to and following the end of WW II when Southern California was a much different place than it is today. The storyline centers around Dave's Texaco Gas Station on Melrose Avenue located across the street from RKO & Paramount Studios in Hollywood…

http://melrose.vonborks.org/

The following is a current aerial of the area where the author has overlayed (in yellow) many of the places he talks about that are no longer present. You can see that where the gas station was located is now a parking lot.



The building west of it, Lucy's Restaurant, is also gone and now part of the parking lot. It was a restaurant owned by Steven Crane, formerly married to Lana Turner, and he has stories about this.

He has a table of contents of locations that he talks about, including ones I've not heard of before, like The Airliner Lounge, a bar off Hollywood Blvd. at Wilcox. (He has a question mark after Wilcox.)

He tells a lot of interesting stories, not all of them PG rated! (Involving drugs, jail, celebrities, a gang bang...for instance.) He was born in 1929, so he was a teenager during this period; fifteen in 1944. It's an entertaining read!

He doesn't provide addresses and there is only a couple photographs, like this one of the author's friend Eddy and his girlfriend in front of the Texaco Station on the left and on the right is the same girl with the author, who has the unlikely name of Manfred von Borks:



Some of the locations he has stories about are
John Burroughs Junior High
Fairfax High School
Hollywood High School
The Airliner Lounge
Lucy’s Restaurant
Leroy Shoes
Melrose Grotto
Polar Palace*
Spyders Pool Hall
The Beer Garden

*I see that the Polar Palace has been mentioned "once" on NLA. In post #4153, HERE, there is one photo of it from May 16, 1963...when it burned to the ground.

[oldstuff]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

"Schaefer Hat Works, Los Angeles."


eBay

cute lil' illustration / but no other information.

Schafer Hat Works is apparently alive and well in Noble, Oklahoma, but I can't find any info about it being in Los Angeles.

Here is the phone # if anyone wants to call and ask: (405) 872-9997. I am at work and they frown on things like that....

[Martin Pal]

POLAR PALACE

I found a couple more photos on A BRIEF HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA ICE RINKS.

http://www.squareone.org/PolarPalace/

Polar Palace began its life in 1928 as Glacier Palace, a huge barn of a wooden structure at at 613 N. Van Ness Avenue between Melrose Avenue and Clinton Street. The rink would be renamed the Winter Garden some years later. In 1934, it reopened as the Polar Palace,

Exterior


Interior


Another photograph of the fire

[BarSnake]

That will be a shame to box in the Figueroa Hotel. I stayed there a few days a couple years back and really enjoyed it.
This forum prompted me to look up the history of the building. It was the first woman financed real estate project as the YWCA.

[ethereal_reality]

Originally Posted by oldstuff

Schafer Hat Works is apparently alive and well in Noble, Oklahoma, but I can't find any info about it being in Los Angeles.

I found Schaefer Hat Works listed at 1291 W. Jefferson in both the 1926 and 1927 city directories.


LAPL


By 1932, it had moved several doors away to 1287 W. Jefferson, and opened another outlet at 628 S. Olive.


LAPL
__

[tovangar2]

Originally Posted by BarSnake

That will be a shame to box in the Figueroa Hotel.

The City Car Wash lot changed hands for just over $500,000 in 1980. It sold last year for close to its $25 million asking price. Unless the Figueroa Hotel buys out the developer (not gonna happen), that new hotel will be built.

[ethereal_reality]

Rip-Van-Winkle Motel and Apartments


ebay

reverse




-it's still there, under it's new moniker....Grand Motel (yeah, right)


GSV




-on the far right there's even a 'port-corchere'.


GSV
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